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Saturday, 13 October 2012

Strawberry Cheesecake

So I had two tasks today: tidy my room and do uni work.

What did I do? I made a bloody strawberry cheesecake :P and I regret none of it!This here is ffing delicious. Chewy, satisfying base and creamy, strawberry-y filling. MMMMM. When I was making the base I was struggling not to eat it all... when I made the filling I was struggling too. And when I made the sauce I just gave in and was eating it off the spoon.

The cheesecake I made wasn't very big because I was lacking in the main ingredient- cashew nuts. The recipe below is for what I made but feel free to double or triple it ;)

Ingredients:

Base:Handful of dates

Handful of other nuts (I used a mixture of walnuts and pecans)

Cheesecake:Two handfuls of soaked, plain cashews

One tbsp stevia

One tbsp vegan margarine

Lots of chopped strawberries (ten maybe?)

Vanilla essence

Pinch of salt

Sauce:

About 3 strawberries

Stevia

Lemon juice

Method:

Blend together the crust ingredients until nice and sticky but not smooth. I thoroughly recommend NOT using a hand blender for this, if possible. I used one because that's all I have and everything kept flying out and whacking my eyes and I had to stop every minute to unclog the blade. But it worked, I'm just saying, if you have a choice, don't use one.

Press the mixture into the bottom of a cake tin, nice and flat. I used a round tupperwear box with foil in it because I didn't have a cake tin... haha. The one rule of cooking- be inventive!

Now you can prepare the yummy filling.

In the microwave, cook the margarine and stevia together for one minute.

Put the cashews in the blender, pour over the melted marg/ stevia and blend. Blend till it's soooo smooth! And in the vanilla and salt to taste. I found that the vanilla really makes this taste amazinggg so don't skip it! Now stir in the chopped strawberries, you could possibly blend a few in but I would worry that it would make the mixture too liquidy and it wouldn't set. Now pour into the tin and level out!

You can halve some strawberries and place them on top to decorate, if you like.

The cheesecake now needs to go in the fridge to set for a good few hours, or overnight even.

When it has firmed up nicely, make the strawberry sauce. It's very simple, just blend up the stalkless strawberries with a little stevia and some lemon juice. It's sooo good ;)

Now pour over the cheesecake and ENJOY!

UPDATE: I ate like a quarter of this (sounds a lot but it's quite small :P) and like 2 hours later I'm still full and satisfied! It was delicious and with a normal sugary/ dairy cheesecake I would have wanted to eat the lot... shows what wonders natural fruits and nuts can do :)UPDATE 2: Here is the last piece (don't worry i gave lot's away :P) with grated chocolate on top with some reaaally nice aniseed/ fennel tea :)